People Tell Stories About Their Unhinged Neighbors
17. Noisy To The Max
“When I was a single mom with 3 kids, of necessity, we lived in a really crappy apartment in a seriously crappy complex.
At the time, it was all I could afford. I worked two jobs, my kids were in school all day. In other words, our apartment was quiet all day long, 5 days a week. At least.
The people who lived downstairs from us did not work.
They slept all day and partied all night. Eventually, we learned to sort of sleep through the screamingly loud music and other party noise; the cars coming and going, beeping their hellos and goodbyes, front door constantly opening and slamming shut, laughter, yelling and as the night went by, screaming arguments and fights in the parking lot.
Every morning we went out and picked up the bottles and cans, butts, and worse left in front of our apartment.
Other than a few attempts at requesting that they ‘keep it down’ which was utterly ignored and a couple of calls in the middle of the night to the police with the same request which was also ignored, we realized that resistance was futile and we stopped complaining about it.
After about a year, I inherited a piano from my grandmother. An ugly old upright with the most beautiful sound and a fabulous touch.
I was a classically trained pianist but at that point in my life I could barely afford my rent, a piano was out of the question so this was a huge deal to me.
Once it was moved into the apartment I couldn’t wait to play, my fingers twitched with eagerness. The instant the movers left, I sat down and Hayden sonatas just poured out of me.
About 15 minutes in, there is a banging on the floor. Entranced with what I was doing, I ignored it. More banging on the floor. Over and over. One of the kids brought it to my attention. Laughing, I said that at that moment, I just didn’t care. They laughed with me and I played on.
After about 30 minutes, the doorbell rang. One of the kids answered the door then called for me.
I went to the door. It was the partner of the downstairs neighbors and he is seething with anger, didn’t I realize that they were trying to sleep? On and on he went about how rude and inconsiderate I was. I said nothing. He ranted and raved threatened and swore. I still said nothing. He finished with this sentence, ‘we wouldn’t mind so much if it was good music.’
Whereupon, I closed the door. Latched it and turned the key, went back to my piano and resumed. This time, Rachmaninov.”
16. Just Take Your Complaints To Facebook Like You Always Do
“Kathy was a former downstairs neighbor of mine who was a devotee of paganism (though, she always called herself a “witch”). She had a bunch of occult stuff in her apartment, would wish people “Happy Samhain” during Halloween, often dressed in black, etc. This didn’t really bother me because who cares what crazy people want to believe? My small Midwest county has a population of just over 30,000 people yet contains well over a hundred gosh darn churches, so what’s another crazy belief among so many others?
I only mention the witch stuff to drive home how flighty she was.
Kathy started out as a very friendly and considerate neighbor.
She was constantly engaging members of my household in warm conversation. If either of my kids disappeared while doing laundry, invariably, they were in her apartment after having been invited in for cookies or other baked goods. She even used to give my daughter her unwanted designer clothes (both were very petite and roughly the same body type despite my daughter being in middle school). In return, I convinced my father (who owned the building) to allow her to have a dog in her unit despite it being against the lease (we’d had a LOT of pet damage over the years, and it’s just easier to not allow animals period).
Overall, she acted like a neighbor anyone would want to have.
Unfortunately, this didn’t last.
As mentioned, my father owns the apartment house we live in, and one day, he called to ask why Kathy was complaining about me on Facebook. He said she was whining about how noisy we were- always thumping the floors or playing our television or video games too loudly, and she couldn’t get any sleep.
Needless to say, I was gobsmacked because at no point did she ever say anything to us. We saw each other all the time, so I would have expected her to say something if we were disturbing her. Having lived in her unit myself for ten years, I knew full well how annoying it was having loud, inconsiderate people above me, so I had always been careful to chide my children if they ever thumped the floor or otherwise caused too much noise.
Perplexed, I went downstairs to ask her what the problem was.
Kathy wasn’t in her unit, but I could hear her in the other downstairs apartment, occupied at the time by a single guy about my age. I knocked on his door, he opened it, and sure enough, there was my complaining neighbor relaxing comfortably on his couch. I knew the two of them were very friendly (despite having an out-of-state partner, Kathy spent a worrying amount of time alone with the guy downstairs).
It really wasn’t any of my business, though.
I told Kathy how I’d learned she’d been complaining about me on Facebook, and I apologized if we were being too loud (even though I really didn’t feel we were) and asked her to please say something to me in the future if we were disturbing her. She in turn apologized and explained that (here’s the kicker) she had recently started some new medication which a) made it hard for her to sleep and b) made her EXTRA SENSITIVE TO NOISE.
While I didn’t say anything, in the back of my mind I was like, “Well, then why in the heck are you complaining about MY family being too noisy when it’s YOUR substances that are causing the problems?” but to maintain a good relationship, I let it go.
I went back upstairs and told my kids we needed to be extra quiet from now on and to stay out of the kitchen at night because it was directly above Kathy’s bedroom. This was just to be safe so as not to thump the floors if she was trying to sleep.
About a week later, she started complaining on Facebook again about us being too noisy.
In fact, her posts became extremely insulting. Now to be fair, I am overweight and so is my partner, but Kathy REALLY harped on about our weight and how we were so fat that she was afraid we were going to crash through the floor and crush her. She even called my very sweet, quiet partner a “cow.” She even attacked our parenting, saying how crappy we were because we made our kids do chores around the house like cooking, cleaning, and laundry.
Again, this was only about a week since the two of us had a friendly chat where she all but admitted her prescription substances were the problem.
I called my father and explained the situation to him and told him I didn’t know what else to do. Fortunately, not only did he believe me, but Kathy’s insults convinced him she wasn’t worth the hassle and didn’t care if she moved out or not.
Eventually, I responded to her posts on Facebook, not only reminding her how she told me all about the medication she was on but also pointing out how she was spending all that time with the guy downstairs despite having a partner.
We had several Facebook rows back and forth like this until eventually, she broke her lease by moving out without giving us the required notice.
She also left the unit dirty, so we kept her security deposit.
A couple of months later, Kathy filed a small claims lawsuit against my father alleging emotional damages from how terrible I’d been to her and how we’d illegally kept her deposit. This was ridiculous because a) anything I said was reacting to crap she had said, and b) the building is in my father’s name, and I don’t legally have anything to do with it- technically, I’m just another tenant.
Our lawyer laughed when he saw the filing and sent Kathy a friendly letter warning her that if attorney fees started racking up, she’d be on the hook to pay them when she inevitably lost the case. She didn’t even bother showing up for the first hearing and we won by default, which means not only did she lose her $500 security deposit for breaking her lease, but she was also out another $100 she had to pay for the filing fee.
Technically, we could have countersued her at that point for the attorney fees we’d already accrued, but we decided to let it drop and to just get on with our lives.
The last I ever saw of Kathy was a photo that showed up in my Facebook feed of her dog, a white poodle that she had taken to a groomer to be completely dyed a myriad of garish colors. The poor thing looked like someone puked a box full of Lucky Charms all over it.
Yeah, she’s THAT kind of person.”
15. He Destroyed His Rental
“I (23M) was living in a rented condo in a Pacific Northwest university town.
One day, a new downstairs neighbor, Dan, approx 21M knocks on my door and asks if I want to smoke some of the special stuff.
“Sure, sounds good.” I invite him in and we chat. Before leaving he notices my microwave; “Hey, I don’t have a microwave yet, could I heat my dinner in yours.” Uh oh.
After 3 days of Dan asking to use my microwave for every meal, I eventually told him I was sorry but he’d need to figure something else out.
He looks really bummed out, but says OK and is typically friendly to me in passing.
A few months later I’m watching tv with my partner when a loud repetitive thumping from downstairs starts shaking our apartment and manages to knock several framed pictures off our wall.
I have pretty bad social anxiety, so I timidly go downstairs and nervously say, “Hey, there’s a loud thumping coming from down here. Is everything okay?” Dan then enthusiastically replies, “Sorry about that.
Come check it out.” I follow him into his living room where I see a small skateboard ramp they had constructed to practice tricks inside “because it rains a lot.” Next to the prerequisite stack of pizza boxes, there are also 4 human-sized clay statues and a giant wooden pyramid in the corner, all partially demolished.
There is also a parakeet frantically flying around the apartment and bird poop all over the floor, because why not? Trying to make polite conversation before asking him to not practice kickflips inside, I ask about the statues.
He laughs and says “they were all just sitting outside of the art department at the college!” Wonderful.
They’re all stolen student projects. I ask Dan, if it’s not too much trouble, that he and his friends try not to skate inside.
There was still some occasional noise after that, but nowhere as extreme as before so I let them be.
One day, an elderly couple knocks on my door. The woman is obviously near tears. They ask me if I know the downstairs neighbor.
“Not very well,” I say. It turns out they are the owners of the condo below mine and their tenants have skipped on the bills and left the condo demolished.
This is their first property investment and first time acting as landlords. I’m not sure why, but they invite me down to come to see what’s left of the apartment.
The first thing I notice is that they had peeled up the entire carpet from the living room and stacked it on their patio.
All of the wooden cabinets in the kitchen had been removed, put in a pile and set on fire.
There is a parakeet that passed in a small cage hanging from what’s left of one of the demolished statues. I don’t believe it was the same parakeet I had seen flying around a few months earlier.
Perhaps most bizarre was that they used a sledgehammer to completely demolish the wall between the two bedrooms, seemingly just for the heck of it.
I told the landlords I was terribly sorry this had happened to them and promised I’d call them and the police if I saw the neighbors again.
Two days later, I hear some repetitive thumps from below my apartment. I look out over my front patio and I see Dan with a hammer in hand. I call the police and explain the situation then call the landlords. The landlords ask if I could go downstairs and talk to him to keep him occupied until the police arrive.
I was a compulsive idiot and I also felt bad for them so I say yes.
When I get downstairs, I see Dan who smiles largely at me and nonchalantly asks how I’m doing. Right behind him, however, is his girl, seemingly 18 and far along into a pregnancy. Her legs and belly are sticking out of the small bathroom window and she is stuck, Winnie the Pooh style.
He is using the hammer to try to break the window frame while his pregnant girl is stuck in it.
She is crying. I go wide-eyed and ask if she’s okay and I offer to help or call an ambulance. “Nah man, we’re good. We just needed to grab a couple more things before we move out,” he says cheerfully as if this is standard procedure for moving out of a condo. This was all so weird that I start to get paranoid and I suddenly become fearful that he would somehow know I already called the police.
I said, “I think I have something upstairs that would work better than that.” I go upstairs and recall the police and explain that there is a pregnant girl stuck in a window downstairs and may need an ambulance or paramedics to help.
A few minutes later, when the police arrive, I see them manage to get the poor girl out of the window, then put her into the back of the cop car.
I go out to talk to the officers and they say they only found her stuck in the window.
Dan had bailed and left his pregnant girl behind.
It was a truly bizarre experience and looking back I wish I had taken more initiative on multiple occasions with the condo board. Maybe I could have been more proactive with helping the pregnant girl until the police arrived.
I saw Dan once more downtown a year later, panhandling with a bunch of 20-somethings.
This was over ten years ago and I honestly doubt he’s still alive.
Aside from the obviously terrible decision to leave his partner behind during a break-in, I did feel some empathy for the guy.
Most of his behavior was most likely drug-fueled, but I was young at the time and wrote the behavior off as him simply being “crazy.” I really hope the partner was able to get out of that situation. I still don’t know how I didn’t hear them demolishing a wall or smell the burning cabinets downstairs.”
14. Petty Neighbors That Like To Throw Things And Eavesdrop
“This all happened in 2020.
I have called the police (non-emergency) several times.
It all started when they would block my driveway with a quarter or so of their crappy Montero sport. Okay, fine. But to do it regularly? And also creeping more and more into the path of the driveway until we say something? Yeah. We knew.
So, one day, I come home, and they’re backing out of the driveway.
The night before, they constantly threw crap on my carport. So, when I got home, I asked them, “Y’all going to get more crap to throw at my house?” And I laughed.
I’m 34, an entire adult, pay my own bills, blah blah. But I live with my dad. It’s easier; lots of millennials are kind of forced to live this way.
Instead of responding to my sarcastic comment, they literally put their car into reverse (I live on a corner in a burb) all the way around to the front of the duplex.
So, I walked inside.
I was behind my father (he owns the home, so they came to whine about me). They start telling me that I have a tree over my carport and that’s what’s been dropping on my carport. The guy is a smaller man in stature, and his woman is at least twice his size. His kids or her kids (not sure the familial structure) were the ones throwing crap at my house.
The parental figures show up, and this little red-haired jerk of a man steps into my doorway telling me about this tree.
It’s easy to see that this tree is barely over my carport and also doesn’t have the type of branches that can cause the level of noise on top of a metal carport that we have witnessed. Every. Darn. Day. For 2. Flipping. Years.
When they started yelling, my dog literally ran out between them.
I had to run and catch her, and when I got her back, they were gone. I was on a feeder street into my neighborhood about an eighth of a mile out from the front door.
When I took my dog back inside, I notice someone is outside on my driveway. It was the butthead who blocked my driveway with the MonSport. I walk out the gate and ask him why he’s on my driveway.
He has his camera on and said that he’s recording. He’s an idiot because Texas is a one-party state, meaning you don’t have to inform the other person that you’re recording the conversation. Anyway. He was arguing that his bumper wasn’t blocking my driveway when he was literally parked in front of my driveway. So, he and I had a chat. He kept telling me he can do it, and it isn’t wrong, blah blah blah.
If I had to take my father with lymphoma to the ER, we’re driving his car, which is the side he blocked. If someone has something like lymphoma, if they ever get a fever of like 101, it’s basically hardcore recommended to get them to the ER; otherwise, loss of life becomes largely possible.
My concern was if I had to ever get my elderly father to the ER and backing into my neighbor’s car on the way out, I’d literally leave the scene because screw waiting for the police; I gotta go.
He said he could block my driveway whenever he wanted as long as he doesn’t park in front of it.
The spot he parked in is so small, you can barely fit all of our combined trash there on trash day.
Luckily, I looked at his registration tag, and it still had 2019 on it. So, we told him. Bro, you’re blocking our driveway, and your registration is out by a year almost.
He instantly moved his car, and they have never parked another vehicle there of their own.
Then for some reason, a friend or acquaintance would show up every other night.
They would throw crap at our house together.
One day, they threw those like spark snaps or whatever they are. I watched a spark land on the ground and go out. I couldn’t believe it. Literally throwing things so hot that they can start a fire.
Afterward, they took to listening to what I say in my backyard. I run an extremely small stream on an extremely small social media site.
I like to stream outside. They started driving by my house when they see and yelling things I said during my stream. One time, he rolled up calling me all kinds of names, calling me a nickname that no stream or non-close person would know. Because they eavesdropped, literally listening to what I say in my backyard.
I called the police. They filed a harassment report.
And nothing since.
I still have crap thrown at my house by this trash.
It’s really pushing me over the edge like the authorities won’t help, and I don’t have the means to love out. We own this duplex. They rent.
We called their landlord so much that he told us to stop calling him.
I’m at my wit’s end. They are provoking me to the point that I might retaliate. The police won’t do anything.”
13. They Just Assume We're Animal Abusers
“We live in a 4 story block building in Central Europe. We have 2 dogs that we rescued from the shelter approximately four years apart from one another. The first one is a big and calm dog, though we assume is probably deaf. The second and most recent one is a smaller breed and has been with us since he’s been about 8 months. Before we adopted him, he lived his whole life in a cold, dark shelter after being thrown away by his previous family.
Both of them are lovely, and we love them both. We try to provide them with the best we can: comfortable mattresses to sleep on, good-selected food to eat especially because the first one has a very sensitive stomach (we think they tried to poison him before he was found on the streets), go for walks, and everything else.
Our latest dog had a pretty rough life before as far as we know, and as he is small and still a puppy, he becomes very, very scared when we do anything that can be seen as a threat or when we leave him alone at home.
He’ll literally cry as loud as he can for a long time when he’s alone.
He knows when he does something wrong (like eating the plants or destroying the couch’s cushions) and hides scared. When we approach him to show him he did wrong – and again I repeat, only show – he runs away SCREAMING to find a hiding spot, usually out in the balcony under the chairs, and keeps screaming.
Yet, we have never laid a hand on him.
The police once came and said the neighbor reported animal violence and wanted to check on us.
They saw the dogs (and our pet chinchillas – 2) are kept in great condition, are clean, well-fed, and happy. They didn’t understand why they were called and sided with us. They told us we should talk to the neighbors (didn’t mention who called them) and left us alone with nothing else.
Today, the dog again screamed on the balcony, and the neighbor from upstairs shouted back at us that we should stop beating the dog or else he’s coming downstairs.
I should mention that I am a foreigner and understand about 90% of the language where I live, but I don’t feel confident enough to engage in an argument over the balcony fence with a native speaker, but my woman is from here, so she bravely and “politely” welcomed the neighbor to come downstairs, which they never did.
Said neighbor likes to leave us anonymous, mean messages on our mailbox, but we know it’s them because their kid (who hates them and also sides with us because of a complicated story for maybe another time) told us it’s them leaving the messages.
We suspect we now know who called the police on us, and we’re slightly worried we’ll be receiving another visit very soon or more messages or that maybe they will finally show up in person.”
12. No, Sir, You Can't Have My Woman
“Years ago, my woman, kids, and I rented a townhouse.
We had been there for 4 years and were on a month-by-month lease.
The owner told us that they would not be extending the lease because she was selling the unit. No big deal, but the lease ended in July, and we were told this in May.
We scrambled but were eventually able to find a great house in an excellent neighborhood to buy.
It was during the housing crisis so we got a huge deal, too. Paid about $100K less than the neighbors.
Anyway, at the townhouse, there were a few neighbors that would ogle my partner. I don’t blame them. I mean, she’s attractive!
They were all married except one guy that I will call Brian because that’s his name.
Brian was divorced a few times and had kids in their 20s who lived with him.
He would constantly run outside if he saw my partner out there. He would mention to her that he saw her going to the store or to the mailbox or whatever. We had a community pool, and he would see her going there with the kids and follow, so he could hang out with her while she was in a bathing suit. It creeped her out so much, she would wrap a towel around herself until she confirmed he wasn’t at the pool.
I had to have words with him more than once about this.
Moving day comes, and we haven’t told any of the neighbors we are moving because why would we?
Brian comes over as we are loading the truck and asks my partner, “Which one of you are moving out?“
I stop and tell him, deadpan as can be, “Both of us.“
He was hoping it was a divorce situation, so he could try to hook up with my girl.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.
I come home from a work trip one day, and my girl tells me that Brian was driving past our house.
I don’t know how he did it, but he found out where we live.
We still live in the same city, so I reason he either saw my partner and followed her home one day or just drove around until he found us.
We live in a cul-de-sac. There is no freaking reason for him to be driving there. It’s not like we’re on the way to someplace.
Finally, my girl has my car because I have to take her’s in for maintenance.
The doorbell rings, and who is it but Brian.
He is obviously stunned to see me answer the door and starts to stammer out some bullcrap about why he’s there.
He knows about my military time and what I was in the Army.
I tell him, in no uncertain terms, that if I ever see him near my home or my partner ever again that it will be the last thing he does on this earth.
I make him acknowledge that he understands me and to tell me he will never come here again, and he scurries to his car and leaves as fast as it will take him.
It’s been a few years, and neither of us has seen Brian.
Every now and then, I’ll see a car I don’t recognize on our cul-de-sac, and I always look at the driver.
Just in case.”
11. Obnoxious With A Capital 'O'
“I’ve had some bad neighbors in my time, but my current ones really take the cake. It’s like you have a checklist for garbage neighbors, and you’re just going down and checking all of the boxes for them.
I moved into this duplex with my girl who had already lived here for about 5 years prior to me moving in, so she had already dealt with them for a few years.
Because my girl is a much more passive and conflict-weary person, she never really brought up any grievances, which is the perfect recipe for disaster. They continue their obnoxious habits and amplify them to the nth degree. To air my grievances now would almost be overwhelming and sudden.
But some solace: we’re moving into a house we just bought, so I can laugh about this now. Peace, losers.
Where do I start? Every house in my neighborhood is a duplex, but I (lucky me) have the only house in the entire neighborhood that does not have a separate entrance.
This means that we share an entryway, and in order to access both our downstairs areas, we have to go down the stairs of our shared hallway.
In passing, they’re very nice people. Very friendly, always greet you with a smile, always ask you about your day, what you’ve been up to. Extremely cordial people to talk to. That’s great and all, but it doesn’t make up for their behavior, which is pretty much a 180 from how they’d act to you in-person.
Firstly, they’re probably the loudest neighbors I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some druggie upstairs neighbors who would sing karaoke at 3 AM.
Nearly all hours of the day, they’re yelling, be it general loudness or heated arguments. Literally nonstop. It can be 8 AM or 3 AM; it doesn’t make a difference. They will be yelling, and you can hear all of it.
We share a mudroom in the back of the house off of both our kitchens that lead to a back porch where they constantly chain smoke.
Because they don’t keep their kitchen door closed, not only does the smoke constantly infiltrate the house, but it amplifies their voices tenfold. I don’t want my entire house to reek of it all the time. Sometimes in my bedroom on the other side of the house, I can hear them as if they’re just outside my door.
On the weekends, more kids come over. I think there are like five kids over there, screaming their heads off, running around for hours on end.
They have a 2-year-old child that they very clearly do not discipline at all, and he screams his darnhead off for hours and hours on end. I’m pretty patient when it comes to small children, but there’s a limit.
With most kids being at home now for school, it’s clear the kids do not attend any of their cyber classes; they spend the entire day screaming their faces off, only to be yelled at in very, very loud arguments by their parents later in the day.
The shared entryway is always a freaking mess with whatever you can think of littering the ground.
Empty chip bags, fake press-on fingernails (yes, I don’t know how), t-shirts, you name it. The front and back of the yard are littered with butts and odds-and-ends. It looks like some run-down junkyard compared to the relatively nice rest of the neighborhood.
We have one of those landlords that lives far away and doesn’t really give a crap, so he never has a reason to drive here.
They had two dogs, but they got rid of them.
They got another large dog, and he barks his head off non-stop. I’m a huge animal lover, so that just bums me out. I’m sure he’s just really, really bored and feeling caged up.
The man who lives there wears boots made of tungsten and storms up the stairs (quite literally the loudest I’ve ever heard someone walk) at a moment’s notice, sometimes early in the morning, sometimes at 2 am.
He slams the front door shut with such force that the frame was broken, and now the door doesn’t close properly. The wall now has a hole in it from where the handle smashed into it.
My girl used to give in-person music lessons here, but she really can’t do that now considering the constant yelling and pervasive odor of the special green plant. It’s just not a good look for us.
One of their daughters stole one of my girl’s student’s cell phones during a lesson, and the police had to be called.
Sounds great, right? Now, these are all very justified reasons for lodging a complaint with my landlord, but given my circumstances with him, that’s not really doable. But as I said before, that doesn’t really matter since I’ll soon be out of here.
I’m not sure if I really encapsulated just how annoying they are. I am certain I’m forgetting a lot. If you have a qualifier for what makes a bad neighbor, they check it off.
Good grief.”
10. Being Bullied As A Form Of Retaliation
Looks like someone can’t handle being told the truth.
“So, the neighbors involved are the one attached to us (in a semi-detached property), who I’ll label Household A, and the ones that are just 1 house along, who I’ll label Household B. Also, since both my sisters are involved, I’ll call the one who got calls Sister G and the other Sister A.
So, originally, this all started because household B’s kids starting kicking footballs at our house on purpose.
My mom did go to the parents and asked them if they can get the kids to stop, but instead, the father just shrugged off my mom and was angry at her, saying stuff like, “They’re kids; they can do whatever,” and for the next couple of months, they ended up egging their kids on to do it more and starting us down on the street whenever we left the house.
The behavior got worse when my dad left, and the behavior started increasing so much that the kids were now kicking the ball at windows (even at bedroom windows) and banging on our door, so we got CCTV (didn’t help; they kicked the balls at them instead and claimed they were fake).
My mom once again tried to talk to the parents, but they don’t even answer the door to her now.
She ended up complaining, and even though ball games were banned on the street (not just because of this but because the road constantly has cars coming along, and there were other neighbors complaining), this didn’t stop until lockdown officially happened.
So, Household A gets involved around 3-4 months before lockdown.
They started playing loud music. We wouldn’t really have minded if the music didn’t vibrate throughout the whole house and if it was during the day, not 9 pm-3 am.
(Also, my sisters and I are autistic, so the vibrations were a sensory issue for us.) My mom has messaged and talked next door multiple times asking to keep the noise down.
The first couple of times, the neighbor said, “Oh, sorry; it’s the kids” (and then the music played again the next night), but it soon turned into, “They’re kids! I can’t control them! Just deal with it!” So, we ended up putting a noise complaint in and kept a diary.
This is when it started to get worse. Household A didn’t like this at all.
The mother started encouraging her kids to throw stuff over our backyard (stones, pegs, bits of trash). They either threw stuff over the fence or from the mother’s bedroom window. I just want to note, even though we’re attached, the fence separating us is relatively tall, meaning the kids would have to be standing on something to throw stuff (which was confirmed when we saw their heads peeking over multiple times).
Unfortunately, it didn’t stop at that. They started to throw food all over our front yard, and they managed to get my sister G’s phone number and called/texted her multiple times (shouting/texting abuse at us). We ended up getting more CCTV for our back yard because of them throwing stuff over and they started screaming “nonce/pedo” and saying that we were recording their yard/kids.
Again, we weren’t; you would of only to be able to see them when they looked over the fence.
So, onto the attack part of this story (which happened literally 2 weeks ago). It was about 10 pm at night, and they started playing loud music again and shouting in their yard (the mom was intoxicated), and my mum and sister G asked if they would please turn it down.
The mom started shouting at us and saying, and I quote, “Come out to the front.
I’ll take you on!” My dad (who was staying over that night because we were nervous about her behavior and the other household didn’t seem to do anything when he was over) went round to talk to the dad (since he was sober).
My sisters followed him to make sure he was okay (due to what the mom was saying).
As my dad was talking to him (he was placid, saying he would sort everything out), the mom decided to lunge and hit my dad in the face.
Directly afterward, she ran at my sister A with a smoke!
My sister pushed her back and was running back to the house with my dad and other sister. As they were running back, she chased after them and went for sister A again when sister G get in the middle (to prevent her from getting hurt) when she punched/scratched my sister in the face (drew blood).
Even after they ran back in the house, she started throwing the chairs we had in the front yard at our door.
I was with my mom inside the house (my mom was technically in the yard because she was looking over the fence when talking to the other mom), and the moment mom saw her go after my dad, she called the police.
The police arrived, and she was arrested, and we had statements taken, but we didn’t feel safe in our house anymore, so we had to flee to a hotel.
(Also, I didn’t realize at the time, but obviously, while we were hiding inside the house, she threw a mini table over the backyard. I’m guessing this is before she started throwing chairs at our front door, or one of her kids did it.)
She was released without any charges which was confusing for us because we have evidence of her attacking us until they said she has witnesses going with her version of the story.
Turns out that Household B (all of them, even the kids??) was out there after we ran back in the house and was talking to her, most likely to come up with the story (which included me going out there and everything she did was out of self-defense, even though she doesn’t have any marks, and the CCTV shows I never left the house).
The police didn’t bother going any further with it because she didn’t want to press charges, and they viewed it as a domestic.
So, currently, Household A and B have been shouting terrible things at us (we are back from the hotel and haven’t got enough money to stay away forever, unfortunately) and getting their kids to throw stuff at our windows and bang on our doors.
Somehow the kids know the blindspot of the CCTV, so we got another camera pointing directly at our front door, but this again resulted in more shouting.
Thankfully, there is currently police action going on but nothing yet.”
Another User Comments:
“I am currently going through something similar with my neighbor’s. I made the ‘mistake’ of knocking on their door at midnight to ask them to turn the music down as it was loud enough to make my banister vibrate. Since then, they have put in constant complaints to the police, council, and my housing association, none of which are true. I have now installed CCTV front and back so that I can without a doubt prove our innocence. Just for clarification, my neighbor’s own their house, and I pay full rent for mine; they have told me that I have “no rights as I don’t own my house.” xxarianinxx
9. Obsessed With His Grass
“My grandmother bought riverfront property in the mountains for all of us to visit and have our campers sit on. After buying it and getting to know the neighbors, she learned one of them is very salty that she bought the land. He had been using it for free from the previous owner for his own family to put campers on and for some boy scout groups to camp on.
The woman that sold the land to my grandmother told her she had been trying to sell it for 5 years, and the neighbor always tried to haggle for half of what she wanted. The seller did not tell him when she finally decided to go down on the price and sold it almost immediately to my grandmother.
Well, the first year up here was great; he and his woman would come over for a chat when we arrived and wave when they saw us.
Then my grandmother started to change things. She had to dig out for new septic which took out a couple of young trees, and she graded the driveway a little bit, which took out shrubbery and mostly overgrown weeds.
Because of this, there was a clearer view between our properties. The neighbor got mad that we weren’t being as “private” as before.
Since then the neighbor has been a passive-aggressive nightmare.
If we get here late in the evening, the next morning, he is out mowing with this broken lawnmower at 7 am for about 3 hours. He only has about a half-acre to mow, and it should only take an hour at most to push mow it. This mower looks like it belongs in a Loony Toons cartoon by how old it is and how it sounds.
Whir-tttt-whir-ttt-whiiiiiiiirrrr, and he’s constantly running over sticks and hitting rocks. The blades have to be trashed.
Well, last night everyone had got here about 5, and I got here at 8.
My family told me he had been mowing since they got there so for over 3 hours. Around 8:30 he stopped mowing and brought his motorcycle out of the garage to idle for about 30 minutes then put it back up without going anywhere.
Well, we had hoped that meant no mowing in the morning…..but here we are.
He’s been mowing again since 7:30. The grass is super damp up here in the mountains and should not be mowed. You can hear it clogging up the machine. His woman is power washing the side of the house too that I know she had just done last week.
It’s so quiet up here that it sounds like a jet engine breaking up the peace of nature.
I don’t know how he can equate this noise to us quietly playing cards or going down to kayak for hours. Most of the time, we don’t even have children with us up here, and we don’t party. When kids are here, they are very well behaved and are usually drawing on rocks with chalk or playing tag. There’s rarely more than 8 of us here at a time.
Update: After an hour and a half of mowing again and the partner power washing, my dad was trying to talk to them. The man was ignoring him, so he asked the partner if they were doing this on purpose.
She politely said they had company coming over (which we’ve never seen them have anyone, even though they talked about visitors a lot), so she just left before my dad could say anything again.
We went on with our lives and then she came back standing at her front door a fair distance away and yelled, “Are you (grandmother’s) kids?” We said yes, and she yelled back, “We can do anything at any time; it’s our property,” and my dad just yelled back, “We just wanted to know if your purposefully waking us up,” and she went back inside.”
8. Charming, Handsome, But A Jerk
He was too good to be true.
“While I was living with my parents, a young guy moved in next door.
He was totally handsome and I was instantly curious about him. He became popular in the neighborhood very quickly. He’s charming and handy—likes to be helpful and very social. He started building fences and doing all of this impressive work on his house. I had a strange feeling about him though, and it prevented me from feeling motivated to talk to him.
He was always in pursuit of a new ‘fan’ though so he eventually approached me.
Attention from him was nice at first—he seemed fun and harmless—until I got to know him better. He has a son and he spent a lot of time ranting about the mother of his son being ‘crazy’ or ‘obsessed’ with him.
I figured it was plausible—bad relationships happen all the time. I didn’t see a red flag until later… one night, we were having drinks among his friends and he started bragging about how he was ‘seeing’ his neighbor’s daughter on the other side of him…he began to make fun of her.
He whispered to me not to tell anyone. He said she was terrible ‘intimately’ and called her ‘obsessed’ as well…I was detecting a pattern. I found out later that it was true and the neighbor’s daughter really had feelings for him and was devastated.
Eventually, I began to notice other things.
He befriended others in the neighborhood—people with expensive toys like dune buggies, tractors, etc. He convinced these other neighbors to let him use their stuff and eventually he convinced my parents to let him use their RV.
FOR FREE. Just handed it over to him! I have no idea how he does it. He borrowed it for a weekend and didn’t even wash it…in fact, he spilled something on the comforter and poured milk and cookies down the drain. Which rotted in the gray tank. He began jokingly mentioning wanting to use my parent’s Jeep and boat as well…I became very afraid of his intentions.
He has always been disrespectful. He leaves trash in our front yard and always claims it’s not his. He leaves dirty plates on the fence and lets his dog poop in our yard. And apologizes for nothing. He does nothing to make up for it or remove it. He’s handsome and charming and it’s alarming to see him get away with EVERYTHING.”
7. This Neighbor Had 8 Kids Too Many... And They're Total Brats
“Back when I was living with my ex-partner like 5 years ago, our area had a decent cost of living, and I was making good dough, so we were in this super nice apartment complex. It was all recently remodeled, in a really convenient part of town, lots of amenities (huge pool, fitness center, free on-site laundry, private dog park, all kinds of stuff – it was great), and super quiet, so it was all-around great to live in.
We lived in the middle unit on our floor, so we had one unit to our left and one to our right.
One day, I notice we’re getting new neighbors on our left! Being the friendly person I am, I whipped up some cookies—one batch of ‘normal’ chocolate chunk with salted caramel and one batch of gluten-free/dairy-free chocolate chip, just in case they have dietary restrictions. I bring them over in nice little boxes wrapped in ribbon, along with a card saying ‘welcome to the community, if you ever need anything reach out, etc., etc.’ So, I go over and knock, and when the door opens I see this lady with, I’m not joking, like 8 freaking kids.
My stomach drops, I know this is gonna suck, but I’m hoping maybe they aren’t all hers, she’s babysitting or they’re having a play date or something. I introduce myself anyway, welcome her, all that, and ask, ‘So are all the little ones yours?’ She gives me an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’ and starts running me through all their names and ages, I zone out because I couldn’t care less, and then she asks how many I have.
I tell her none, I’m childfree, and my partner and I love our pup enough to be satisfied with him. Her entire demeanor changes, she looks at me like I just ran over her mom, and she goes, ‘Well, that’s disappointing.
Haven’t you considered how selfish you’re being? Everyone needs a little baby. Who’s going to take care of you when you’re older? What are you even going to do with your life?’ I’m internally rolling my eyes severely, but I just tell her I’m focusing on my degree, and my career, that I’m in the human services/social work field because I want to dedicate my life to helping others, and my lifestyle just doesn’t include a child.
She responds with more crap about how the best way to help the world is to bring more babies into it, blah blah blah, I zone out harder.
At this point, I’m trying to get out of there and so I change the subject and give her the cookies. Before I can explain which is which, she rips open the wrapping and shoves one of the gluten/dairy free cookies in her mouth, chews for a second, and then SPITS IT OUT onto the ground next to where I’m standing.
She looks at me all disgusted and is like, ‘What the heck are these? They’re freaking gross!’ I explained to her that they’re gluten/dairy free because I wasn’t sure if they had restrictions and that the other box has the regular cookies.
She rolls her eyes and shoves the first box back in my hands, opens the normal cookies and eats one, says ‘Yeah these are better, you really shouldn’t give people those other nasty things, they’re disgusting.’ (I took them back home after all this and several friends of mine tried them, I thought they were pretty good, and so did everyone else.
They just weren’t exactly the same as a traditional cookie, not bad though!)
Her kids are now behind her, seeing that she has cookies, and as kids do, are now begging for them. Now, I made a dozen. Seems like a reasonable amount for any family, right? Even if they had four kids, they could each have two! But again, these people have eight.
At this point, I was kind of just over the interaction, gave her the card, and was about to go back into my apartment when she goes, ‘WAIT.’ I turn back around and look at her.
She says, ‘You only brought 12? There’s 10 of us here. Me and my partner want to eat two cookies, so, what my kids only get one each?’ I’m internally rolling my eyes again but I say, ‘I’m sorry, but I had no idea you had so many kids when I made them.’
I try to leave again, and this time she grabs me by my shoulder and DEMANDS that I make them another batch, saying, ‘My kids deserve more than one cookie.
You don’t have kids, you don’t do crap all day. Just go make more, you don’t have anything else to do. You owe it to them.’ Her kids are still crying and begging in the background, and she points this out. ‘Look at them. Look how sad you’re making them. Does that feel good, making children cry? I flat out refuse and tell her that if I had known she was going to be so rude and ungrateful, I wouldn’t have bothered in the first place.
I snatch the box of cookies from her hand and go back into my apartment.
I thought that would end it. I was wrong.
She then opens my door and starts to walk inside, yelling about how those are ‘her children’s cookies’ and that I should be ashamed of myself for ‘stealing from a child.’ I push her back out again, slam the door closed, and lock it.
She then proceeds to pound on my door and scream at the top of her lungs, demanding not only the original box of cookies but several more batches, because I was ‘such a C-word’ that her children and she deserved them. She went on like this for at least 25 minutes, before our landlord got involved—my building was right next to the leasing office, so I’m sure she heard the screaming pretty clearly.
She was told to leave me alone and under no circumstances was that level of noise or that kind of behavior acceptable.
That ended the craziness that day, but honestly, it was insufferable living next to her—there was constant screaming and crying and loud noise, at all hours, every single day. If I or any of our other neighbors complained, we were being ‘stuck up’ and ‘rude,’ because they’re ‘just kids.’ There were always gross bags full of dirty diapers sitting outside, right in between her door and mine.
Again, my complaints were futile. Her kids were always playing on the stairs and the deck leading up to our apartments, making them a hazard because they were constantly underfoot whenever I’d leave/come home.
When I brought this up, I was told: ‘Kids are allowed to play wherever they want, and if they get hurt, it’s your fault!’ They also harassed my dog (a corgi puppy I’d trained as an ESA) every time I took him out, to the point where he developed anxiety towards going outside—thankfully I handled that pretty definitively when on one occasion one of the little brats walked up and smacked my pup directly in the face and pulled on his ears.
He yelped in pain and then growled and snapped, and I absolutely lost it. I screamed my head off at all of the kids, told them if they ever touched my dog or so much as came near him again, I’d have him eat them, and if that didn’t work, I’d call the dog police and have them all arrested (it’s silly, but they were young enough that it worked really well.)
All this nonsense went on for almost a year, with my landlord getting more and more fed up with the constant complaints, and her constantly using the ‘they’re just kids!’ defense, until it finally happened.
At some point, their destructive little monsters had somehow put a hole in the wall we shared. While I was waiting for maintenance to come to fix it, I noticed a ROACH scuttle out of the hole and into my apartment. I killed it immediately, but everyone knows if you see one roach, you have a ton. I put duct tape over the hole, and then went and POUNDED on their door.
When she answered, I just completely lost it on her. I screamed in her face about how disrespectful and nasty she and her family were, how I couldn’t believe she was okay with wallowing in her own filth like a pig in poop, and how she should have her entire little brood of screaming monsters taken from her for being so disgusting and revolting to the point of cultivating a roach infestation.
I seriously just let her have it for like a full 5 minutes straight, and when I was done I went back into my apartment, made sure my pup was kenneled, locked my door, and marched down to the office.
I guess in the time it took for me to kennel the pup and everything, she had called down and reported me for ‘harassing’ her, because my landlord asked what had happened.
I filled her in on the situation, explaining the roaches and their disgusting living conditions. She was furious. She inspected both of our apartments and pointed out that our lease includes a clause about maintaining sanitary conditions and avoiding infestations.
They ended up with a 30-day eviction notice, and they tried to guilt-trip me, calling me a witch, asking how I felt making a family with young kids homeless, blah blah blah. I didn’t care at all. The day they moved their crap out and left was the happiest day of my life, tbh.”
6. A Delusional Compulsive Liar
“When I was thirteen, a new neighbor moved into the house next door to mine (which we share a driveway with). Our neighborhood is really close and likes to have get-togethers and block parties, so we all got together and had a little celebration to welcome her. Immediately, it became clear that she did not like my dad.
A while later, we find out that she’s been telling our neighbors that my dad was inappropriate to her at the party.
I know my dad would never act like that, but he isn’t a native English speaker (he’s Middle Eastern, which is relevant), and hey, maybe some sort of wire got crossed, and there was some kind of misunderstanding. So, my dad goes to try and apologize to her. It does not go well, and she tells my dad to leave, which he promptly did.
Then she put up the security cameras.
They absolutely covered her house getting views of pretty much every angle including lots of shots of our shared drive. “Whatever,” we thought. “A lady has a right to put cameras on her house.”
Then the cops started showing up. She called them claiming we had messed with her cameras or that me and my friends were shining laser pointers into them. The cops would leave pretty quickly because the supposed crime involved a camera, which somehow hadn’t captured any evidence of the supposed crime.
Then she started claiming that we were poisoning her yard.
She spent a lot of time in her lawn gardening and growing plants, but for some reason every six months or so, she’d cut everything down and start over. Anyways, the cops started coming asking about our supposed poisoning of her lawn, but they couldn’t find any evidence. We didn’t have any poison, her cameras hadn’t picked anything up, and we had no freaking motive to poison her lawn.
So, she started an inquest with the department of agriculture. A pesticide use investigator showed up and interrogated us, then took samples from her yard.
While that was going on, we had a few fun encounters with her. Once, she bought a giant floodlight and pointed it into our windows in the middle of the night. The fire department had to come and unplug it. Another time, our dinner was interrupted when a massive hazmat truck came blaring down our street.
Men in heavy gear poured out and charged into her house, and then, minutes later disappointedly filed out. One guy came and told us that she had bought a Geiger counter and used it wrong and had thought that we had irradiated her house.
Finally, things came to a head when she sued us to get an order of protection. She claimed that my dad was a member of an al Qaeda sleeper cell intent on destroying her.
She also claimed that he had used his skills as an engineer to develop a device that she referred to as a white ion laser which would allow him to turn invisible and sneak into her house. She submitted one terabyte of film from her cameras all of which was annotated with such incriminating evidence as, “Squamesh leaves the house. Squamesh enters the house.” There were also tons of photos and notes.
It was here that we discovered that her cameras were pointed into my bedroom and had been filming me for years.
I was a young lad by this point, so there’s probably video evidence of some pretty embarrassing teenage behavior out in the aether now. We later legally forced her to move the cameras, but she kept moving them back, so I just kept my blinds closed for the better part of a decade.
During the trial, the department of agriculture report came back. It was determined that our crazy neighbor has poisoned her own lawn by over-fertilizing it.
She received a fine for contaminating the groundwater.
We obviously won the lawsuit and countersued her to get our own order of protection. We also had to legally get the files on us at the FBI and CIA closed since she had reported us to both agencies.
Despite losing the suit, she continued to live next to us, occasionally calling the police on us or suing us again.
All things accounted for, the cops were called on us 37 times, we were sued five times, and of course, there were the investigations with various federal agencies.
It’s now been ten years, and she’s finally moving out. Why, you might ask? Does she feel guilty for accusing us of crimes with no evidence for a decade? Had her paranoia finally driven her to move? No. She didn’t pay her property taxes for six years, and her house got taken from her.
She tried to sue the city on a bunch of occasions as well and failed. Womp, womp.
This is only a summary of the situation. There are tons more. I haven’t even gotten into her kids, her partner’s scam, the video she posted to YouTube of her dog dying, her faking a disability, and so much more! These stories will help you understand just how crazy she really is.
Here comes the partner scam story…
So, when she first moved in, she had a man. We thought nothing of it since plenty of people have partners. He seemed like a nice guy too. Unlike the crazy lady, he was willing to talk to us and be cordial. He owned some local construction company and was pretty well off (just barely a millionaire if I had to guess).
Well, after about six months, we see him loading a bunch of his stuff into a truck and then we never see him again.
By this point, we’re well into the insanity and so any crazy neighbor-related activity sent off alarm bells at our place. So, my mom starts investigating. She’s a lawyer, so she knows how to search through people’s legal histories with a fine-tooth comb.
It turns out that this guy was partner number four. We Googled the previous men, and what do they all gave in common? All were independently wealthy business owners.
None lasted more than a year. Each one had a prenup which promised the crazy neighbor a healthy sum of money.
That made things start to make sense. Our neighborhood isn’t crazy high class or anything, but the people around us do well for themselves. The crazy neighbor didn’t work. She barely left the house. Turns out, she was living off of her partner’s money.
While she’s lived next to us, we’ve seen partner number five and six fall victim to the same scheme.
She actually would have been kicked out of her house sooner, but she convinced one of them to pay her backed taxes for her, buying her some time.
Then here’s the story about her kids.
I’ll preface this by saying that her insanity inspired a certain level of reciprocal insanity in my family, and my mom especially would take time every month or so to see what she could dig up on our crazy neighbor’s activities.
Because of that snooping, we knew that the kids were supposed to live with her, but we never saw them.
One was around my age; the other was about six when they moved in. We’d see them maybe once every couple of years leaving the house, but that was about it.
I can’t say with any certainty that they were actually living in that house, but they were supposed to be. And if they actually did, then they had very little contact with the outside world.
The disability thing comes from a similar snoop fest.
We found out that she sued the city for violating her fourteenth amendment rights as a disabled person somehow. We looked into it, and she was claiming that she couldn’t stand or walk for more than about five minutes. And yet mostly every day, we’d see her out in her yard for hours doing manual labor.
That suit ultimately didn’t go her way (shockingly), and I’m pretty sure it had something to do with her eventually losing her house.
I think she was trying to leverage the disability thing to somehow get away with not paying her taxes? But, honestly, I’m not sure.
And here’s some other weird crap I just remember.
Since we share a driveway with her our garages basically share a wall. This setup has led to some funny encounters. One time, after we already had an order of protection against her, she waltzed up to our door and rang our doorbell to try and get us to sign a document letting her tear down both of our garages so that she could enlarge hers.
We told her to get the flip off of our property.
When it snows, we only shovel our half of the driveway/garage area since we don’t want to start any trouble. One time, my dad and I were out shoveling, and she “accidentally” let her dog loose (not the pug from before. This is a breed I don’t recognize, but to paint a picture, it’s a medium-sized dog with a jacked body and a tiny head).
It ran over and started barking at us and being threatening, so we threw snow on it and it ran away.
One time, I noticed that the wood of our shared garage wall had cracks in it, and I got curious, so I peeked into her garage. It was full to the brim with cardboard boxes, and the door looked like it had been jerry-rigged somehow. I like to believe it was booby-trapped, but that’s probably an embellishment.
One of her notes that was submitted during the trial cryptically read, “I fear the man with the beard.” The issue was that no one in our family had a beard at the time. That one was a head-scratcher.”
5. Make Up Your Mind: Do You Like Us Or Not?
Just a ball of confusion.
“My neighbor currently. My partner and I moved into our current house 2 years ago. It’s a full 3 bedroom house, 1,600 square feet for $750/month. The only reason I’m mentioning this is because it’s a steal for the area, hence why we haven’t moved to solve our neighbor problem.
Now to the neighbor, Peg. She’s a mid 60-year-old lady, “hermit alcoholic,” no one in the neighborhood actually enjoys her, she’s miserable, always has a problem with one thing or another, but is the first to start neighborhood drama.
Anyways, as we are moving, there were a few things I just carried from the old apartment to this current house.
It’s only a stone’s throw away. Quite literally, less than a block. So, our first encounter with Peg. I’m walking through our yard (combined back yard at the time) to bring some stuff in with my dog. She comes out and says, “Oh, you have a dog? I don’t like dogs” proceeds to go back inside. She would periodically pop her head out and say some snarky remark about God knows what as we’re moving in.
Next issue was, I was driving through our side of the yard to unload some of the heavier stuff (washer, dryer, fridge, etc.), and she had the audacity to come out in an uproar saying to “stop driving on the grass; you’re ruining my property.” Like, I said, we have a split yard, but I don’t have to cross the property line to get from the road to my door.
A few weeks go by, and nothing.
Our dog is really well trained. We had him trained to stay off her side of the yard within 2 days off-leash. One day as I’m outside with him, she comes out expecting some scolding or something. She actually does her first nice thing for us. “You can let your dog run the full yard; I don’t use the yard for anything. I’m rarely out here.” Thanks, I’ll cut the grass in the full yard if you’ll continue letting him run.
Fast forward a few months, haven’t really heard from her much.
It’s now winter. A bad winter. Shoveled snow from our on-street parking spot, and she would take them not offering tickets help shovel out another for our car. Then if someone took the spot was in, she walked around the neighborhood knocking on doors to scream at whoever car was there and make them move.
We made it a weekly routine to remove the dog’s waste from the whole yard at least once a week in the warmer weather.
Between the cold and the snow, we didn’t do it as much. When it warmed up and the snow finally melted, we received a letter in the mail almost instantly from her brother (some type of lawyer), and the landlord also received a copy of this. By this time, we’re great friends with the landlord, and she basically tells us to ignore that crabby witch. Anyways, the letter says, along the lines of legal action will be taken if the waste isn’t removed and if we continue to let our dog run “at large.”
Nothing ever came of it.
We’re going into our 1st spring at this place about a year living here. She now decides she’s going to cause problems any time the dog is outside and start parking out back to check for dog waste on her side of the yard, which is no longer there because we have since retrained our dog to not go over there. Rinse and repeat, everything started about for the next year.
Until we get to April of this year.
We had asked the landlord for a fence, to which they agreed after they settled some stuff. We offered to buy it if she was okay with it going up, or help install it, or help pay for it. Basically, anything we can to get a fence up. So, like I said, April is here. the landlord calls and sets up a date to get a fence up.
It’s nothing crazy, just a small “chicken wire” type fencing, but it works great and keeps the dogs in. As we’re setting the fence up, she comes out and is acting offended.
“What brought the fence on? Was it something I did? You know your dogs are okay on the yard, right?”
I ignore it and so does the landlord. The fence is up, but there’s only slight issue: there’s about 3 feet of our property on her side of the fence.
Okay, whatever; I’ll cut the grass like normal and just go to the other to finish it quick.
About 2 weeks later, we see Peg outside measuring from our fence to the fence on the neighbor’s on her other side. We don’t think much of it. Then out of nowhere about a week later, she is hooking a fence up from our fence to the other neighbor’s fence.
Fine, I don’t care or so I thought.
The next time I see her, she proceeds to tell me, “I know I blocked in your property with my fence, but I told Chris (cut her grass) to not cut your 3 feet of grass, but I’ll allow you come on my property to come cut it.” That’s the last that has happened, but I’m sure they’ll be more.
She just boils my blood.”
4. 50-Year-Olds Who Love To Party And Host Doggy Playdates
“We moved into a nice duplex this year and love the space. Our landlord lives above us and is a nice/cool individual. We live in Los Angeles.
When we were looking at the space, we told our landlord that our top asks were a quiet space and a neighborhood with respectful neighbors. Our prior residence, we lived next door (on both sides) to neighbors in their early 20’s (about 4-5 people living in each house) who partied hard and loud every weekend and during the week into the early hours of the morning.
It was a nightmare. We tried a lot of ways to cope and be “cool” and understanding, but at some point, hearing an intoxicated kid sing karaoke outside your window at 3:00 am and a DJ booth with speakers just isn’t cool, so we packed our things and left a really nice space behind (the unit itself was gorgeous!). It was a tough choice. We have lived in a few cities, have always rented, and have never ever had any noise issues.
If there had been noise, we tolerate it or ignore it. In fact, we received a noise complaint from someone once or twice over the years, so we aren’t perfect ourselves but learned how to be more aware of our noise.
Fast-forward to our current place. The neighbors next door are not the quietest of folks. Every day in the early morning, they have a dog playgroup come over and mingle in their backyard.
I never hear the dogs, but the human noise is unavoidable. Our bedroom windows face their backyard (quite literally – there is no fence or separation from their backyard on one side of our house). We started sleeping with a white noise machine, but inevitably, we can hear them (that’s how loud they are – think of how loud several people might be at a dog park, but they are in a small backyard and shouting 6-feet apart from each other).
I am grateful that the weekly 6:45 am lawn maintenance with leaf blowers and chainsaws to trim the palm trees is no longer a thing (for now).
Around the same time as the dog group, they started hosting weekend day parties at their house in their backyard. The parties started out innocent but lately have been just as loud as the 20-something kids we lived next to.
The yelling and howling and screaming is – to put it nicely – unwelcomed to the ears. Saturday and Sunday, we are subject to all-day party noise, unless we keep our windows and doors that face their way completely shut – which is so awkward and weird, and who the heck wants to live like that when you have beautiful Los Angeles weather?
The other issue is that our landlord partakes in both the daily dog playgroup AND the weekend parties; otherwise, I would have talked to them about this weeks ago.
Mind you – these folks and our landlord are in their 50’s. I know they mean no harm, and I don’t want to kill the fun – but the fun is leaving me tired and like I can’t enjoy my space fully. It’s just a big combo of noise every day. I wouldn’t care if it was just the dog playgroup or the weekend day parties, but it’s just a constant noise yelling machine 7-days a week.
When they are quiet – our block is TOTALLY silent. So, it’s not like a common thing to have a bunch of noise in this neighborhood (which is why we chose it and are paying a nice sum of money to live here).
I’m tired of moving. It’s like we keep gambling and losing.”
Another User Comments:
“You could also ask about moving out and breaking the lease. I think it’s pretty crappy that the landlord didn’t mention any of this noise when you explicitly laid out that you were looking for quiet.
What are the noise ordinances in the area? Before 7 am is very early for noise to be starting; usually quiet hours don’t end until 8 am. Since they are predictable, you could ask the police to look in on them before quiet hours end and tell them they need to keep it down at least during that time.” Comprehensive-Tea-69
3. The Neighbors Who Are Never Happy
“Before we were married and bought our first house we were quite young (early 20’s) and obviously massively excited.
It was a new build on a new estate. Quite a small two-bed house. Not that we cared. It was ours.
We had neighbors either side of us and we wanted to be friendly and polite without being intrusive. One side was a young couple like ourselves and they were lovely.
We got on really well with them.
On the other side there was a couple in the late 30’s. The first time I met him, we drove our cars on to the drive at the same time. He looked over at me, shook his head and ignored me when I said hello.
I was surprised but thought he might be hard of hearing or tired.
A few days later I was watering our garden (feeling like a proper adult taking care of our grass) when I heard an angry voice shouting.
I didn’t take much notice at first thinking it could be anyone nearby until I heard, ‘OI, IM TALKING TO YOU, YOU IGNORANT POS.’ I looked up to see him at his bedroom window with a face like thunder looking straight at me. I said, ‘SORRY, WHAT?’ He said, ‘KEEP THAT FREAKING WATER AWAY FROM MY FENCE.’ I was absolutely stunned and had no idea what to say so chose to ignore him.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t upset me at that age but I didn’t want to make a scene.
We didn’t see them for a while, owing to work patterns, but when we saw them next we were coming out of the front door as they were going in. She wouldn’t even look at us to the extent she kept her face turned right away from us and he looked at us, made a point of looking us up and down, and made a sort of grimace with his mouth.
They then walked inside.
We were both genuinely surprised and upset.
We try to keep to ourselves but we are always polite and had no idea why they would be like this.
I spoke to the nice neighbors about it a few days later and he said that they weren’t nice to them either but would stand outside our house and make disparaging comments about us because I rode a motorbike and we used to go out on it.
At this point I thought to sod it and that I was just going to ignore them or treat them with the same kind of contempt.
A few days later, I forget how long it was, we were watching television in our living room.
There was a really heavy banging on the front door which really shocked us. I went to see who it was only to see him standing there with a face like thunder.
The moment I opened the door he screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘TURN YOUR FREAKING TELEVISION DOWN, THIS ISN’T THE FLIPPINGGHETTO IS IT.’ (I promise you it wasn’t loud and the walls are not paper thin)
So I slammed the door in his face and went back inside. He stayed there banging on the door for a few minutes. We were very very tempted to actually turn the volume up but weren’t children so didn’t bother.
The routine of both of them making great strides to try and upset us continued with the snide comments when we passed where they would actually wait for us to get out of the car, banging on the walls at all hours, telling our postman that we didn’t want our mail (he wasn’t a moron so ignored it and told us) and even trying to order lots of junk mail to our address (which was really useful.
We had pet rats so it was free bedding). After about a year, the humor had gone and both my friendly neighbor and I went to have a final showdown where we explained how sick and tired we were of it all.
We knocked on the door to which we saw him open his lounge door then close it. We knocked again and waited.
About ten minutes later (we were being persistent) two police cars hurtled into the road preceding several burly coppers jumping out and ordering us on the floor.
Having never been in trouble with the police (well…not reeeeeeal trouble..), we were both stunned into submission. It took the police all of thirty seconds to realize that the call about two men waving machetes at the front door was a…lets go with fabrication….as in fabricating the f&@k out of it. They went to let the couple know their feelings in the matter.
We had both gone to my house and were shortly joined by the police who sat with us and explained that this couple was in direct fear of their lives because of the constant threatening we were apparently doing.
Thankfully they were switched on and realized it was all rubbish, especially after speaking to other neighbors who pointed out they had all had meetings with the couple who wanted to hound us out of our house because we were riff-raff and not up to the level of the area with my loud motorbike.
They all said they were prepared to give statements to the police about it which I found very touching knowing very few of them even by sight and we made an official complaint of harassment.
Within TWO WEEKS their house went on the market. Within another month they had gone. When the new neighbors arrived they were quite nervous of us having heard how awful we were.
It’s quite funny looking back at it now. It’s not something I have really thought about since however in hindsight I can see that it really left us very low and sapped a lot of our energy no matter how much we tried to be the bigger people.
I know nowadays I would have dealt with it a lot quicker and nipped it in the bud almost immediately but at the time we just didn’t want to be seen as anything other than nice people.
I have absolutely no idea why they acted like it. They were both smart, professional adults and for them to act like complete jerks seemed to be at odds to the way they presented themselves. Oh well. Live and learn…”
Another User Comments:
“Heard of the TV program, Nightmare Neighbor Next Door? It is on ITV and basically has stories like this, it’s quite interesting.” Tom Brough
2. I'm Not Covering For You After You Hit My Car
What kind of fool would fall for that?
“So, my partner and I live in a small, one-bedroom house on a narrow street. It’s technically a two-way street, but only one car can pass through at a time. Because of this, people generally drive slowly, but there are a few frequent speeders that just drive so fast it’s dangerous.
Our neighbor (we’ll call him G for the purposes of this story) has been generally bearable to live next to until recently.
He always parks directly in front of our house, which wouldn’t be a big deal, but he throws huge tantrums if anyone parks in front of his. He’s slashed tires before for this.
He has people renting rooms in his house that always change, and he’s always arguing with them very loudly. It’s not uncommon to hear them getting kicked out in the middle of the night for stupid reasons, oftentimes, waking us up and just being really annoying to lose sleep for.
My guy’s mom, dad, and other siblings live super close by, so we pay his little brother (LB) to cut our grass for some extra dough.
He used to cut G’s grass too but never got paid, so he stopped. About a week ago, LB had finished cutting our grass and turned the lawnmower off. A little grass fell off the mower and landed on the sidewalk by G’s house.
Before Little Brother got the chance to blow it off, out comes G screaming that he is stupid, and a moron. I’m not really sure how it got to this point, but LB was trying to defend himself or knew this was an issue for us, I guess, and asked G why he doesn’t just park in front of his own house. G responds by saying, “It’s a public freaking street; I’ll park wherever the heck I want.”
Onto today: Neither my guy nor I worked this morning, so we were at home with his siblings over, playing Monopoly.
We wrapped up our game, and my guy went to walk the kids home. This is when G flies down the street, coming way too close to the kids, and aims to park in his front yard. (I have no idea why he does this, but it happens on occasion.) He misses his yard as he is going well over the speed limit and sideswipes my car.
My guy walked the kids inside their house and then came back out to see what happened. My headlight is broken, I have a dent on my fender, and some major scuffs that went through the paint over the entire fender and bumper on the driver’s side, and it can’t be buffed out.
G’s car has massive scuffing all down the passenger side of his car.
The first thing that came out of G’s mouth to my guy is him begging my guy to not call the police or file an insurance claim.
My guy says he’d have to talk to me about that because it’s my car that he hit.
He comes out to the backyard where I am with my dog and says, “Hey, I’m sorry I hit your car. We’re going to get it all figured out. Just don’t say anything about it until tomorrow because my insurance kicks in later today.” I didn’t want to overreact or get into anything without seeing the damage on my car first, so I don’t really say anything and walk around front to assess the damage myself.
I looked at it and then walked inside to talk to my guy about what I wanted to do.
In the meantime, G speeds off, and we were waiting to hear from our other neighbor about getting footage from the cameras that face the street.
We decided that while we wait for our neighbor to respond about the footage, we would take the car to a body shop and get an estimate done.
We did, all was fine, and well, but we got an estimate for $850. While my guy and I were talking, we realized something that G said was off. We weren’t really thinking about it at the time, but after we both calmed down a bit, we realized that he had asked us to call police and insurance the next day and pretend the accident had happened then.
Weird. I thought about the fact that he asked us to wait until the insurance “kicked in” and realized that when you insure a new vehicle, it’s normally immediate coverage; it doesn’t normally take days to “kick in,” so he probably just didn’t have insurance at all. After realizing this, we called the police.
An officer is sent and arrives in about 5 minutes and asks what happened.
We tell him about the accident, showed him the camera footage of it, and he gets G’s number from a neighbor to see if he can get ahold of him to find out where he went. G answered the phone, admits to hitting my car, and the officer said that G was very surprised that we called the police and said he would return in a few hours.
The officer tells us to call back when G returns and let him know that the police are coming back to get everything sorted out. We also told the officer how G told us not to call them or my insurance company until the next day and pretend that the accident happened then. Lying to the police and insurance agencies is a HUGE no-no, and I wasn’t about to lie to cover our jerk neighbors butt.
G returns much sooner than expected. It was probably not even ten minutes after the first cop left that he came flying down the street (even faster this time). My guy is inside our house trying to relax, and I am across the street at our other neighbor’s house talking about what was happening.
G flies his car door open and stomps his way up onto our porch and POUNDS on the door, runs off the porch, and is waiting in his own yard.
My guy comes out, I come out, my guy’s parents come out, neighbors are already out; it’s a whole parade.
So, anyways, G is in his yard. I come and stand by my guy in our yard, and G has already started screaming his head off at my guy. G yells at him and said that he would regret ever calling the cops on him. He looks at me and says, “If you EVER park in that spot again you WILL regret it,” “I’m gonna take my three cars and block yours in and take up the whole darn street,” and some other dumb stuff.
I didn’t yell back; I just said firmly that I will continue to park my car in front of my own house, and the police are coming back to get this sorted. G and my guy get into it at that point, yelling about how he hit my car and owes us $850 to fix it, saying we have video evidence. G responds by saying, “Good luck taking me to court; you’re never going to be able to sue me, and I ain’t paying you crap.” He said something about how he is just going to file for bankruptcy, so we can’t sue him and something about somehow deleting the videos, but it was all going fast, and my mind was just going a million miles an hour, and I don’t recall exactly what was said.
G and my guy keep yelling at each other, basically repeating the same things until G yells that he basically changes his mind and now will tell the police that he did not hit my car. (Lol.) He goes to his backyard, and my guy and I go into our house and wait for the police, get some water, and sit down to calm down a little.
It was a nasty yelling match, and instead of giving us a chance to talk calmly and figure things out in a civilized way, he threatened my car and my guy.
My guy’s dad called the police while all this was going on, so two different officers arrive this time.
G just absolutely flipped a switch and attempted to act like the victim.
He said that my guy and I ran onto his property, charged at him, threatened him, etc.
for a car accident that he wasn’t involved in, and then changed his mind again and told the officers we shook hands and agreed on how to sort out the damage. (We didn’t.)
One of the officers comes to talk to us again, and we tell him that we didn’t charge him, threaten him, make any agreements, or do anything at all to him. We stayed on our property and just told this officer the same thing we said to the first one.
G starts to lose his temper at this point and starts yelling at us again while we’re talking to the police. They tell him to go sit down somewhere, and they’ll talk to him again in a minute.
The first cop that we spoke to before G was home comes back, yay! So, there are three police officers now. The original officer tells the other two that G already admitted to hitting my car and that he saw the video as well.
I gave them my insurance card, and then they went over to G and asked if his car is insured. He says yes. They ask him for proof of insurance, and he declined, so they say, “So… Your vehicle is not insured?” And he admits that it’s not.
They write out their report, and then G tells the officers that he demands to press charges against my guy’s mom for trespassing because when G called her 13-year old son those inappropriate things a bit ago, she confronted him and told him that he can not speak to her son that way, etc.
The officers are kind of annoyed with G at this point because they know that the incident with my guy’s little brother happened and that G had already been lying to them about the whole situation. G was obviously just trying to get someone else in trouble since we called the cops on him and got him in trouble.
The officers are telling us what to do next, what to do if there are any more issues with G, etc.
G then interrupts them and asks them if they can wait to file their report until tomorrow, so his insurance is active. The officers laugh and say, “That’s not how this works, bud.” My guy and I continue talking to the police, and G interrupts AGAIN, this time looking at me, and said that if I tell the cops to leave and forget all this, then he would pay for the damage through his insurance (that he doesn’t have).
The cops snicker a little and again and say that that is not how things work.
The report is already written. One of the officers went to his car with my insurance card and documented it and took pictures of the damage on my car. I went into the house for a moment, and when I walk back outside, I see one of the officers talking to my guy’s mom about the trespassing, but they’re laughing together, so nothing is going on that’s bad for her.
My guy and I walk over to his mom’s house after they finished talking to the police officer, and we talk about what happened. They got everything documented and gave my insurance card back. They also tell us not to worry because they know that G was lying and changing his story.
He was cited for damaging my vehicle and now has a court date to see if his license will be suspended for driving without insurance.
The officer also told us that apparently when G left the first time, he had gone out to an insurance company and insured his car. He lied to the officers saying that he got insurance “turned on” at 11:14 am and hit my car at 11:15 am, when it was actually around 10:20 am, and we had proof of it.
This just happened today, but every time we have seen G, he has yelled “fudge you,” called us trash for calling the cops, and said that we just should have trusted him to pay the $850 (even when he couldn’t pay a child $20 for cutting the grass regularly).
The cops have had multiple run-ins with him and know how he is. They told me to relax and if he steps foot on our property, knocks on the door, or anything else, just to dial 911 and ignore him until the police come to take care of it.
Unfortunately, my insurance won’t cover the damage, but we were able to find a great body shop and made a plan on dealing with the damage the most cost-effective way.
What would have been $850 will only be around $300! We are going to buy a new fender and put it on ourselves, get the cars paint matched and buy it ourselves, and the garage is going to buff and paint over all the damage for only $100! It was a really awful day overall, but on the bright side, we are going to get the damage fixed for a great price and our jerk neighbor got some Karma.
I’m just not really sure where to go from this point. We’re a little nervous that G may try something again, like throwing something toxic into the backyard for my dog to find or slashing my tires. I’m going to walk through the backyard and make sure I don’t see anything and stand outside with my dog until we move to keep him safe. I really don’t want to have to feel like I need to be constantly on guard to be safe.”
1. Neighbor Won't Keep Aggressive Dog Inside
“We live in rural Canada.
It’s my mother’s house, and we (woman, woman, and child) live here and work from home.
Last year, we got a puppy who is now just over a year old. He’s a border collie cross and has been neutered. Previously, we also had an old lab here who barked at random things, and the new dog took up his “responsibilities” after he passed a couple of months ago.
We have a big property and no fence, but the dog is very well behaved and doesn’t wander beyond our property. As further info, most people on our road have dogs and no fences on large properties, so there are the occasional doggie visitors wandering through our property that our dog barks at from a distance, but there are never any problems.
We have a neighbor who is… strange and awful.
(I have plenty of other stories about her.) She has a huge property with quite a few animals, including dogs who are never allowed inside, but instead, just roam free. One of her dogs is apparently in heat and has been for the past month or so. The dog has now developed a habit of coming after our dog on our property when she hears him bark.
She is terrifying. I have no idea what breed other than medium-large, mottled brown, short fur with a shorter snout. She snarls and slathers and comes at both our dog and us multiple times. We have some roofers here right now, big strapping men, and even they are shocked and terrified of this dog.
Our poor pup gets so scared, he pees and poops everywhere and does this screaming, whining bark that is just so scary to hear.
One time, his paw was bleeding, but we’re not sure if it was a bite or him just injuring himself in fear.
My mom has called the neighbor and pleaded and even demanded that she keep the dog indoors or tied up while it is so aggressive, but we’re worried it’s now become a habit, and even when the dog is no longer in heat, it will continue to come after us.
The neighbor just makes excuse after excuse of, “Oh, I only untied her for a moment” or, “She’s so well behaved for me.” I should note that with the aggressive dog is another big, fluffy, white dog who comes with her but is gentle and goes back home when we tell it to.
This may be associated, but it often happens when her grandchildren are there (pretty much daily) and playing in the driveway on their bikes.
When our dog barks from way far away (like half a city block) at the noise they make, they taunt him by barking back at him.
Our child can’t even go outside to play right now. Plus, we’re scared to let our dog outside too.
We don’t know what to do because if we call some kind of authorities they’re going to find that none of the people on our road have fences for their dogs, and we don’t want to get anyone else (including ourselves) in trouble.”
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